I guess I'm like really out of the loop, but what else besides Runa has Lovestruck done to make people feel like they don't care about us? (seems kinda dumb cuz don't we literally pay their bills?)
Anon, I might not be the best person to ask for info right now! Iāve always been more of a fandom lurker than anything else, anyway, but Iām also on an indefinite break from Lovestruck at the moment. I donāt even have the app anymore. That being said, I do still follow some Lovestruckās official blog, several fan blogs, and a few tags. Hereās what Iāve gathered and my own commentary:
People have been upset about how Lovestruck distributes routes, especially when it comes to LGBT and POC characters.
Why have Irving (the only black main character in GiL) and Mateo (a Latino) had so many fewer seasons than everyone else? Why was Tyrian (the fifth male LI in SP) given a season at all when we only had one LGBT option? What was the deal with VN (the first series with a black MC and with equal male/female LIs) being canned? Why was Julius (another rare black male LI) never given a season 2 in ST?
Those are just the POC and LGBT instances. Thereās also the question of why ST and Castaway were cancelled, why Helena gets so many more seasons than Alain, why Chance has gotten so many goddamn seasons at all, etc.
Most likely, there were business reasons behind all this. Probably most of the customers are here for white male love interests. Probably some series had to be cut to let new ones come in. Probably writers and artists leave. But we donāt ever get official clarification, and the cancelled routes/series are disproportionately heavy in minorities. It stings for the fans of those certain characters and those certain series, especially since so many of us come to Lovestruck for its diversity.
Thereās also some kind of debacle on the money side of things, having to do mostly with hearts and CGs.
Iām not well-versed on this one at all. Iām a gainfully employed adult who doesnāt otherwise spend much on entertainment, so buying hearts has never been an issue for me. I do scrimp on tickets because they regenerate, but when Iām invested in a story, I donāt blink an eye at dropping tickets or hearts. I also donāt really collect or save CGs the way some fans do, unless Iām making an edit. Which I havenāt for a while.
But apparently the amount of heart options has gone up and the number of CGs has gone down, meaning that a lot of CGs are locked behind heart options when that wasnāt always the case. Fans who donāt have the money for hearts therefore cannot see the CGs unless someone posts it online.
Additionally, heart options are costing more hearts and are getting...kind of manipulative? Like others have said, itās coming to āSave your lover for 75 heartsā vs. āDo nothing and hope they survive.ā I mean, they always SURVIVE, but itās still kind of crummy to make us pick between those. And when you DO pick the heart option in these cases, the payoff is kind of small. Usually only a few lines and no CGs.
Which leads me to my own biggest concern: the quality is going down.
Iāve been playing Voltage game since 2013. I started with Voltage Japan, got into Voltage USA from there, and transitioned to Lovestruck when the different series where consolidated. For the longest time, I didnāt complain about the first two things on this list because I was so familiar with the company/concept. I didnāt care if the diversity wasnāt what it could have been because I had played games with absolutely none. I didnāt mind paying for hearts and tickets because I started out shilling out $3.99 per season per character, plus special stories and sequels and all that jazz.
The difference was I always thought spending my $3.99 was worth it because I was pleased with the quality of story.
When it was Voltage USA, each story had sixteen episodes a season, which you would pay for, download, and play all at once. When the rebrand started, became a series of actsāI donāt remember how many acts or how many episodes there were per act, but there were still sixteen episodes. They were released and paid for act by act, much more frequently than the whole stories had been. This is how Astoria, Gangsters, and Castaway started out.
When series like Love & Legends started in the Lovestruck app, they dropped to twelve episodes, and I feel like thatās when quality began to suffer. I adore L&L, but the pacing has never been as good as in the early seasons of A:FK or GiL. The games that have come since are the same way. The romances develop much quicker in-game despite the episodes being spaced out farther. Each new season picks up immediately where the last left off. Thereās no ābreathingā room for the characters, which Iāve personally come to miss.
In the old games, relationship dynamics settled in between the dynamic action of the main episodes. Even if we missed things, I liked that kind of development. All we get now are crazy cliffhangers. Any timeskips happen randomly in the middle of an episode or season. What are August and MC like when the Witch Queen isnāt looming over their heads? Iām not sure they even know.
We rarely see the characters at ease, and their relationship milestones are just scattered over seasons at random. We donāt really have special stories like the ones Voltage Japan has/had, which tended to be more ādomesticāāthings like spending birthdays together, moving in together, going on vacation. These things are either stuffed into weird places in the main plot or drawn out into a season-long ordeal.
The balance between action and romance is so strange, and I think character development suffers for it. I feel like I watch the characters have the same fights over and over. I donāt see them maturing like I used to. I donāt see relationships developing. I donāt see them getting their happily ever afters.
I, personally, feel like they could do better than that, and their refusal to change is very telling.
If anyone else has thoughts, Iād like to hear them!
